


Enumerate

by doc_boredom



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Family Feels, Gen, Light Angst, Overthinking, other characters are mentioned but don't appear, rough and grizzled demon hunter cares a lot more than he'd like to admit, the nero/kyrie is implied btw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 15:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17531264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doc_boredom/pseuds/doc_boredom
Summary: What me, worry? He laughed in the face of greater demons, slayed dark princes and gods. Just how many times had he been impaled, anyways? He was the demon son of Sparda. He was hell fire. He was more than this mortal coil and skin of his.-For Sevi, based on their headcanons (along with wingsofthenight) on how Dante likes to keep count.





	Enumerate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sevi007](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sevi007/gifts).



Dante’s got a little leather bound notebook Trish threw at him one day at random nestled inside his back pocket.

The spine was cracked several times over, the cover soaked through with ages old demon ichor, but it was the _insides_ that were the most interesting thing about it.

The intent of the notebook was probably to wax poetic, or maybe it was to write lists for groceries so he wouldn’t just shove his gullet full of pizza and junk food every night. Maybe it could have moonlit as a dream journal; but Dante didn’t use it for any of that.

He used it to keep count.

A tally mark for each day that passed, each page dedicated to a different event. The lines were the neatest thing in his fucked up life, each lined up one after another like soldiers, bearing witness to his perturbation.

What me, worry? He laughed in the face of greater demons, slayed dark princes and gods. Just how many times had he been impaled, anyways? He was the demon son of Sparda. He was hell fire. He was _more_ than this mortal coil and skin of his _._

_Subhuman._

_Omega._

But as soon as the night settled, as soon as a mission finished or the house calmed down, Dante would draw it out and press another line into each page.

He didn’t even bother with the ‘days since I’ve been attacked due to my god damn heritage’ page anymore. That one was a waste of time, and more depressing than it had any right to be. But there were other pages that he couldn’t rip up no matter how much he wanted to.

Pages that detailed how many days it had been since Sparda up and vanished like smoke.

Pages that detailed Eva’s passing and every day he had to forge forward despite it.

Pages for Lady and Trish and Nero and Kyrie too. How many days had it been since he had seen them? Days since they had gone somewhere where he couldn’t protect them, days since that it took for their injuries to remedy themselves and sink into their skin to turn into scars.

And then there was the worst set of pages. The ones near the back. The ones that he was certain he’d eventually stop turning to one of these days.

Days that these people were even in his bat shit crazy life.

For whatever reason they stuck around. Checked up on him. Battled alongside him. Met his eye from across the room and smiled. There was no reason for any of them to do any of that, but every day he was thankful for it.

And every day he dreaded it too, because the Grim Reaper was a looming threat that almost none of them could ignore. Him too. He wasn’t invincible or immortal… He was just some half breed son of a bitch trying his damned best every day.

It stayed that way for a while. Maybe too long. Each tally mark a dirty little secret that he’d never tell. But then one day Dante found himself accidentally marking up a fresh page without a second thought, on the phone with Kyrie, her voice scared and soft.

“I don’t know what to do.” She whispered, her voice hiccupy with unshed tears. Dante leaned back into his chair and rubbed a hand across his jaw, brow slanting with thought. This was a phone call meant for Lady or Trish, not him, but here he was…

Consoling a new found pregnant woman over the phone.

“Is Nero going to be upset or somethin’?”

“No, he’s… he’ll be ecstatic. At least, I think so. It’s just… it’s a lot, you know.”

He did _not_ know, but he decided against saying that out loud.

Kyrie was one of the ones he worried about most. None of them in their little group needed her to be battle hardened and savage, she was probably better off not being those things, but she was also the most fragile of them all.

Too human. Too  _soft_.

“Well, if he does get upset you call me and I’ll come over and kick his ass personally, but don’t think about it like that. Think about how great this is going to be!” Trish and Lady were going to be ecstatic. They’d finally be able to live out their fantasy of being posh, rich, gift giving aunts. (They had missed out on Nero, after all, a fact that they still lamented.) “You’re gonna be a great mom, Kyrie.”

Her voice went low. “I wish Credo was still here.”

This was their strange connection. They both had lost their brother’s to the strange pull of demonic power. No one would quite understand them like they understood each other. It was akin to a phantom limb, a tugging in your heart that you could never be rid of no matter how much you reasoned they were awful or deserving of it.

“Oh, I know sweetheart.” He sighed out, shifting further down into his chair. “I know.”

It was just the stretch of silence between them then. Dante grabbed the notebook and started to flip through it absently, not even paying attention to what page was what, the lines blurring together. “So, nine months, yeah?” He offered.

Kyrie took it eagerly. “Eight, since the symptoms are showing. Do you think it’ll go fast?” Eight months, huh? Wow. That sure was a long ass time. There’d be all sorts of hunts between that, maybe another strange adventure that threw them all together once more.

Without thinking, he pressed his pen to the paper, marking it up. He looked at it then, the single line against the stark white of the new page, the potential of it...

‘Days until I become a Great Uncle’ he wrote in the span of space above it.

The half demon smiled, satisfied. “I think it’ll fly by.”


End file.
